Curriculum 

At Handcross Primary School our curriculum intent starts from our vision. Our vision is to ensure all our children are

Safe, Happy and Aiming High.

We strive to help all our children to:

• - feel safe, socially, emotionally and physically
• - be happy to come to school and develop their skills and strengths
• - aim high in their learning and do their very best in all aspects of school life.

Our Whole School InTent is:

• To provide a safe, happy and stimulating environment where all children, staff and families are valued, respected, listened to and have a sense of belonging.
• To create a trusting atmosphere where children, staff and families develop confidence, independence and a positive attitude to learning and life.

• To have high expectations, which inspire, motivate and challenge every child to learn and think independently.
• To develop excellent relationships between home, school and other agencies to support and benefit the children and the whole school community.
• To offer a broad and balanced curriculum with clear progression in knowledge, skills, vocabulary and experiences.
• To plan creative, exciting, well-resourced and memorable experiences, based on our knowledge of how children learn.

• To accurately assess pupils so that teaching and interventions have a direct impact on children's learning.
• To provide children with the skills to articulate their learning, including progress towards their targets and for their achievements to be celebrated.
• To foster an inclusive, diverse and successful learning community where there is equal access to educational opportunities for all
• To prepare children socially, emotionally and educationally to become well-rounded members of society, who can make a positive contribution to life in the modern world.

We achieve our whole school intent through implementation of our curriculum.

Basic principles of our curriculum

1. Learning is a change to long-term memory. Retrieval practice in all subjects ensure that concepts are frequently re-visited and not forgotten.
2. We wish to instil high expectations for written and spoken English in all areas of the curriculum; children are encouraged to use full sentences to explain their learning in an articulate way and to demonstrate this in written work across the curriculum.
3. Our curriculum is taught annually. This enables teachers to have an in-depth knowledge of the whole curriculum and draw explicit links across topics for children. EYFS (Nursery and Reception) has its own foundation stage curriculum, which develops the building blocks for future learning.
4. Topics are used as a vehicle for subject specific key concepts so that children make progress towards curriculum end points.

Our Curriculum Intent Statement 2023-24:

Curriculum intent

1. Cultural capital is developed at Handcross through a variety of subject specific experiences based on the children’s learning in order to prepare children for curriculum end points and to support them socially, emotionally and educationally to become well rounded members of society, who can make a positive contribution to life in the modern world.
2. Curriculum breadth for our subjects is determined by the NC programme of study/ Foundation Stage, our knowledge of the children’s learning needs and subject specific teaching expertise. The consistent use of spoken and written English and a wide range of technology underpins all aspects of the curriculum, enabling children to develop their skills continuously.
3. The key subject specific concepts taught throughout the year are organised within subjects. Progression through these key concepts is ensured through subject progression documents, which are used to plan learning.
4. Knowledge organisers help pupils to relate each topic to previously studied topics and to form strong, meaningful schema.
5. Cognitive science tells us that working memory is limited and that cognitive load is too high if pupils are rushed through content. This limits the acquisition of long-term memory. Cognitive science also tells us that in order for pupils to become creative thinkers, or have a greater depth of understanding, they must first master the basics, which takes time. For this reason, adequate time is given to embedding learning within each subject.
6. Within the subject, pupils gradually progress through a basic, advancing and deep level of understanding. The goal for pupils is to display sustained mastery at the advancing stage of understanding by each curriculum end point and for the most-able to have a greater depth of understanding at the deep stage.
7. We regularly focus on feedback and target setting with pupils to help children understand and articulate strengths and next steps for improvement
8. We use low-stakes memory retrieval practice and tasks, which show the level of the children’s understanding and informs summative assessment of the subject.

We give high priority to teaching the fundamentals of reading, writing and maths every day to ensure that all pupils acquire the basic skills for learnng and life, and these skills are used and practiced across other subjects.  

Read, Write Inc is used for the teaching and learning of phonics in Early Years and Key Stage 1. 

Please select subjects on the right hand side menu for specific details on how we approach each subject at Handcross Primary School, including details of our topic approach.

If you would like further information on the curriculum please see the National Curriculum below, which details the curriculum content for each subject, or The EYFS Framework for Early Years. Alternatively, please contact the school to discuss further.

Primary National Curriculum

Early Years Foundation Stage Framework